Robotics technology future is here

Company forges systems for education, military

James Dcane, a design engineer at Anthrotronix in Silver Spring, controls theCosmoBot robot with the AcceleGlove through hand movements and gestures.

From the front lines of war zones to classrooms, a Silver Spring robotics companies is pushing the technological envelope to protect soldiers and help children with possible learning disabilities.

Anthrotronix has a hand  literally  in both endeavors, with creations such as the AcceleGlove and the CosmoBot. The company got its start in 1999 when it received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop interfaces for children to access technology.

CEO Corinna E. Lathan co-founded privately held Anthrotronix with Jack Maxwell Vice. Vice's service in the Marines Corps brings a warfighter's perspective to the company, according to program director Charlotte Safos, and he is in charge of the research and development Anthrotronix performs for various military agencies, while Lathan brings knowledge of education, rehabilitation and therapy, Safos added.

In addition to its federal education grant, Anthrotronix started with a grant from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The grant was to help Anthrotronix develop interfaces for soldiers to control robots, Lathan said.

Those two grants sparked Anthrotronix's growth, and in 2005 it created a subsidiary, AT Kidsystems, which creates products from Anthrotronix research and development. The main product of AT Kidsystems is Cosmo's Learning Systems, an interactive learning system for children that is commercially available.

"We have a lot of fun while doing some good stuff," Safos said.

The company has Small Business Innovation Research grants from several government agencies, including the Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health.

"[The government] likes to see companies who are getting SBIR funds commercialize technology  basically get the technology into the hands of the end user," Safos said.

Anthrotronix has also commercialized the AcceleGlove, a gesture-capturing glove designed for control, communication and tracking that can be applied for a variety of uses, including the military, gaming, medical purposes and research and development.

Lathan expressed excitement at AcceleGlove's application for medical rehabilitation for hand assessment and function, as well as the glove's potential for robotic surgery.

Anthrotronix has also been working with the Defense Department to apply AcceleGlove for robot control for explosive ordnance disposal, according to Lathan.

Anthrotronix has also won a $1.9 million contract from the Army Research Labs that ran from 2003 through 2008 to develop advanced interfaces for human-to-robot controllers and interaction, said Carl Pompei, executive vice president and CFO of Anthrotronix.

The company, which declined to disclose its revenues, also received an ongoing contract from NASA for $700,000 to identify problems with three-dimensional perception in astronauts, plus a contract in 2007 from NIH for $817,000, according to Pompei.

Helping the present,

looking to the future

The technology developed by Anthrotronix has many applications and can be used to solve many different problems, according to Dean Chang, director of the ventures program for the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute at the University of Maryland, College Park.

The Focus Foundation of Davidsonville partnered with the CosmoBot, part of Anthrotronix's Cosmo's Learning Systems, to perform a study on the interaction between robots and children with autism, said science director Carole Samango-Sprouse.

The study found that the children were more engaged and could perform more challenging tasks when interacting with the robots, according to Samango-Sprouse.

"It was easy for the kids because the robot's operations are predictable," Samango-Sprouse said. "It makes it less threatening and more approachable."

The robot's involvement led children to try tasks they had avoided because they were too challenging, she said. Samango-Sprouse noted that the robot would set up a task and two children would take part in it, strictly because of the robot.

Some of the fundamental pieces of technology to perform functions seen in movies such as "Minority Report" and "Iron Man" can be found at Anthrotronix, according to Chang.

The pieces can also be applied immediately for a technology platform for the future while also having a current impact on fields such as video games, he said.

"Anthrotronix goes beyond what is considered state-of-the-art in video games," he said, adding that the Nintendo Wii system "validates" what the company is working on to be more accepted.

"If not for the Wii, people would still be playing video games on a two-thumb controller," Chang said.